With the usual consistency of my revolutionary countrymen, he has, at one period, asserted that the liberty of the Press was necessary for the preservation both of men and things, for the protection of governors as well as of the governed, and that it was the best support of a constitutional Government.  At another time he wrote that, as it was impossible to fix the limits between the liberty and the licentiousness of the Press, the latter destroyed the benefits of the former; that the liberty of the Press was useful only against a Government which one wished to overturn, but dangerous to a Government which one wished to preserve.  To show his indifference about his own character, as well as about the opinion of the public, these opposite declarations were inserted in one of our daily papers, and both were signed “Roederer.”

In 1789, he was indebted above one million two hundred thousand livres—­and he now possesses national property purchased for seven millions of livres—­and he avows himself to be worth three millions more in money placed in our public funds.  He often says, laughingly, that he is under great obligations to Robespierre, whose guillotine acquitted in one day all his debts.  All his creditors, after being denounced for their aristocracy, were murdered en masse by this instrument of death.

Of all the old beaux and superannuated libertines whose company I have had the misfortune of not being able to avoid, Roederer is the most affected, silly, and disgusting.  His wrinkled face, and effeminate and childish air; his assiduities about every woman of beauty or fashion; his confidence in his own merit, and his presumption in his own power, wear such a curious contrast with his trembling hands, running eyes, and enervated person, that I have frequently been ready to laugh at him in his face, had not indignation silenced all other feeling.  A light-coloured wig covers a bald head; his cheeks and eyelids are painted, and his teeth false; and I have seen a woman faint away from the effect of his breath, notwithstanding that he infects with his musk and perfumes a whole house only with his presence.  When on the ground floor you may smell him in the attic.

LETTER XXXVIII.

Paris, September, 1805.

My lord:—­The reciprocal jealousy and even interest of Austria, France, and Russia have hitherto prevented the tottering Turkish Empire from being partitioned, like Poland, or seized, like Italy; to serve as indemnities, like the German empire; or to be shared, as reward to the allies, like the Empire of Mysore.